70: Jasmine Star

all right everybody well welcome to make it happen monday this is john barrows hopefully on a fantastic weekend and i couldn't be more excited for our guest today i have with us the the in my opinion the queen of instagram and social and brand and everything else that i see because i love everything she's doing jasmine star thank you so much for joining me on this make it happen monday podcast john thank you for having me the pleasure is mine thank you and and just to give everybody some ideas of the background here um i went to the vaynermedia 4d with gary v like one of the first i think it was the second one that he had done yeah yeah and that's where i met jasmine i had no idea who she was but everybody else did uh like even gary did you know gary before that by the way no no no he knew you though like no no i mean i don't think no i don't i mean let okay for for all intents and purposes to make me feel cool in this moment moment he did but i don't know how likely that is well because i got distinct vibe that all like people there like legitimately knew who you were because you were acting way too cool to be like you know what i mean it was that is a story you're telling yourself son nobody knew who i was in that room and that is how i want it all the time i want to come in and be the dumbest person that nobody knows to later end up being the black horse at the end of the race yeah see that's why i love you right that's why i love because i'm the same way right i talk about i don't know about you and we'll get into all this conversation but let me ask you are you are you uncomfortable with with the notoriety that you have right now in the sense that and i'll put some context on it like i've never been like the super extroverted dude out there right and when i went off on my own with jay barrows i actually fought really hard to not make it about me i was like oh i wanted to make it a company right it's i can't make it about me but my buddy convinced me he's like john in this industry it's sales training specifically you have it's about yourself it's about yourself and the content so you really should go with jay barrows so i fought tooth and nail and then i said okay fine and you know my big ugly mugs on the website and i just feel uncomfortable about it and still to this day i i when people recognize me if they recognize me i'm i'm shocked how do you like where's your head with all that i'm just like you very similar um i am a thousand percent introvert i didn't get into the game to become popular i started a business because i wanted to be profitable i come from a grant family we didn't have much and i just felt like entrepreneurship was the fast ticket the american way to get to where you want to go and there was a time where i had to i was really um i vacillated between understanding the power of a personal brand to i i'm not i'm not comfortable being in front of the camera i'm not comfortable being in front of people but the minute i shifted my purpose in why i was in front of people because i wasn't comfortable being in front of people out of if it came from a place of ego the minute i started telling myself that i needed to be the face and the name of my brand so that i can empower other entrepreneurs to pursue what they want to do it was a mindset shift and now i just understand that to get to where i want to go i need to be on the front side of it however i feel on the inside i'm making a professional decision to grow my business in a faster capacity and i own that yeah and that's that's kind of same thing with me right because i have like i have posters that make it happen that you know and again they have it like with me on it now i'll give it to my customers as a reminder to say hey you know as you keep like keep grinding right and i had a comment some other days like because i talk about ego versus confidence just like you did the fine line between ego and confidence right and uh and and i and i wrote a whole blog post and some dude was like yeah that coming from a dude puts his face on a poster i'm like yeah but you don't get it like that's the exact reason right and at the end of the day what we have to understand more than anything is that people's opinions of the decisions we make about our business doesn't move our bottom line and last time i paid my bills with the house's opinion was never so here's the thing if you want to do nothing be nothing be known for nothing then never make waves never put a stake in the ground because people are going to have an opinion so people would have an opinion john if you put your mug on the poster or if you put it make it happen the poster people have opinions about opinions it is not our responsibility to pay attention to any of them we got to do what's right by us understand that we're serving a greater purpose for a small group of people anybody else bye like we're cool we're cool so so do you pay it so with that do you pay attention to the haters like the feedback there or like the trolls of that type of stuff or you just let them go by well so um i learned about six years into the business when i started getting a lot of opposition to kind of like who i was and what i stood for because i built my very first business as a photographer and i quickly gained notoriety a significant amount of notoriety in my field for what i did and it really was like a pushback between the the the old guard of photographer and art and the way that it was produced to come in and seeing somebody who's using social media to grow a business and get international recognition and be in the luxury market as quickly as i grew there and it was a lot of negativity and i was quickly guided by a very wise mentor who said there is oh an opinion may or may not have a kernel of truth if somebody writes something negative and there is a kernel of truth to it it'll hit you at your core and if that truth hits you at your core you need to tip your hat thank the hater like bless and farewell i learned the lesson now if somebody's coming at you talking about your mama and you're like there's zero truth in that so in both of the situations regardless of the criticism hurt and it hurts because there's a little bit of truth to it and if there's a little bit of truth to it you got to change you got to pivot you got to amend but either way it's always a positive outcome all right cool i love that all right so so now let's let's get back on track a little bit because i just would love having to talk with you um so so why don't you give everybody kind of that the 30 second background so they know where you're coming from and why i felt it was so important to have you on my podcast because i will tell you you're you're different than anybody else i've had on my podcast most of these been sales practitioners vps of sales that type of stuff and and i purposely wanted to wait until my podcast was at a level that i felt like like it it deserves somebody like you on it so so please tell everybody where where you're coming from oh one thank you for this i approached this opportunity to connect with your people and with you with like the utmost humility because it's an honor the fact that i'm not a sales vp but i can sell ice to an eskimo where i'm in i'm in good company i'm in really good company at the end of the day in 2005 i got a full ride scholarship to ucla law school i hail from a family of latinos immigrants we came to this country because my father believed that we had an opportunity to do something great and in my mind doing the great thing was to build a legacy for my family here in america go to law school be the american dream only when i was there i was just wildly unhappy with the decision because it just felt like it wasn't me but it wasn't until um my first year of law school my mom had a relapsed brain cancer and the doctor said her time had come and it forced me to have a face-to-face conversation with what life and what death looked like and it was then at that point in time where i realized we all die and do i want to die a lawyer or do i want to pursue this life and at least try to do something that i'm excited about and that lights me up and because my mom's life was like kind of in the balance at the time it became a north star and thankfully i had dinner with my mama last night she is a walking miracle everything i know about fighting comes from her like she's just she's the person who had me and gave me a wake-up call and as a result of that i had to have this conversation and uh i had just gotten married and my husband says what do you want to do with your life and i said i want to be a photographer and he said but you don't have a camera i said i know but if i had a camera i think i can make a business out of it and he invested a very simple camera and he said one year one year let's try it and if you fail and if it doesn't work go back to law school and within that first year our business just took off it blew up and that was i booked my very first wedding in october like my first wedding photography gig like the first time i ever used a camera was in october of 2006 and then by uh 2009 i was voted one of the top photographers in the world most socially influential photographer most um influential photographer there was a lot of awards that came and that was about that time a little throwback to the conversation we had earlier was when there was a lot of resistance a lot of people saw a relative like a quick ascension within an industry and people are like what are you doing how are you selling how are you sticking out in the marketplace and for all the good there was a lot of bad too yeah and now so and that's that so i love that because it kind of takes something from nothing and and that kind of leads to my first real question for you which is where do you think your drive came from because i'm so context here again so my daughter she's seven years old right and and i keep asking my parents like what did you do because i just feel like i've always had a really strong work ethic i've really just always tried really hard at certain things because i don't like failing those type of things but i but i asked them like i keep asking like did you do anything when i was a kid to like to to help because i'm trying to figure out what i can help my daughter with as far as that drive and that passion those type of things and i still haven't been able to put my finger on they don't know they're like i don't know we just kind of let you do your thing right so do you have have you kind of thought about that of where your drive really comes from i mean i'm sure from the immigrant background and those type of things but do you know where it really like it comes from and and what drives you um i think i i to be fair i think some of it is innate yeah my i asked my mom about this like how was i as a child and she said that she didn't particularly see me as somebody with a lot of drive as a child but when i was 13 she saw something happened to me to where i was so extraordinarily hard on myself to get straight a's to show up on time and we were really really really poor and i got a scholarship to go to a private school and i was so meticulous about like the two outfits that i owned like washing and ironing washing iron because i wanted to like fit in i wanted to like continue pushing and then i when i got i went to a public high school and there was a time where i just had to like reconcile that i can be one of the pack or i could rise and it was just something that kept on like an inner internal desire to continue pushing i don't know where it comes from but i also do know that in the back of my mind i felt like i had something to prove felt like i had something to prove to my family to where i belonged to whether or not i belonged in college on a scholarship to whether or not i belonged in law school on a scholarship so a lot of this stuff came from a source of like belonging to earn a spot at the table and um it's really played out well for my career so do you think so i because i agree with you i think certain people just haven't in a you know and they they almost need that chip on their shoulder you know what i mean so so like for instance as an example being from boston right like we have a chip on our shoulder inherently well at least historically now because we've won too much but you know in sports and those type of things but against new york right because everybody thinks new york when it comes to east coast and we're like yeah but we're actually more east coast than new york is and you know and there's some big city and so we've always had i think bostonians in general have a chip on their shoulder i grew up in a little town between two really rich towns and we played them in sports and those type of things and so we were always the underdogs and i always had that chip on my shoulder um do you think it can be learned though do you think that drive can be like you said that something happened at 13 and it was kind of innate in you what about those kids because my concern right now is i've seen a lot of um the work ethic piece of my industry right like sales reps those type of things there's a little bit of the hey where are my leads coming from what you know what resources do i have oh i don't have training where like they go out and get it mentality is starting to lose it do you think there's a way that we can foster that um from a from a parental perspective i'm not fortunate enough quite yet to talk about that because i am not a mom but what i can think i was raised by some really incredible parents and even though we were really poor like government assistance poor my parents would take whatever they could they would get like donations from the church and my dad would drive us down to mexico i'm in southern california so we would drive down to like tijuana and into nada and we would give away toys and we would give away clothing and i think that in my mind as a kid i knew things were rough but compared to what i saw in mexico three hours from my house i thought it just it was like a shift so all i know is that now that my business has taken off to such a capacity when i do have the honor and privilege to becoming a mom i will absolutely be taking my kids if you wanna it's not i'm being like we're gonna pass out some toys baby we're gonna teach you how good you have it and to understand because oftentimes i think that the lack of hustle the lack of grit only comes from the from the lack of opposition from the lack of difficulty or at least the cognizance of it i don't think you need to live a rough life i just think you need to be aware of how good your life is to actually get that inner drive to be like i want every leave i want to close every deal i'm going to be the person to push myself it's not going to be a thermometer you know in the office to who's going to get the you know yearly annual trip to cabo it has to do with it yeah no i couldn't agree more and that's why i think like talk to kids about like goal setting and like what's that bigger vision of your life right paint that forget about everybody else paint that and then back into it and know what you need to do to be able to get there because i see a lot of kids just kind of muddling through you know what i mean they're like they're they're happy but not you know they know they want to do something but they don't have they don't have the drive to actually do it and to your point you know i read that article that you wrote about talking out both sides of your mouth right because somebody was a little confused they were saying well quit but don't quit stick with it right that type of thing and i think that's where a lot of people are they're like i want to quit but you know okay so because i because we have like a short amount of time together let's make this tactical i love like let's make it happen what's next time so i'm listening i'm a salesperson i'm listening to your podcast what what are the questions that i want answered between you and i so that i can go or so that you and between you and jasmine because i just put myself in person like what can they do immediately after be like i'm going to change the game right now what questions do they have and that's exactly where i'm getting to because that's what this is all about like tactical and our training is the same way so here's here's this question i'm a sales rep at a company i hear about this brand building stuff i like it but i'm at a company that that the marketing department wants to control the message so they're not comfortable with me doing a ton of posts about hey look at me and and using that to bolster the organization what do i do i think it's going to be important to have a conversation to navigate the culture of the company first so if you have the rules then you could play by them but oftentimes the marketing department is like 10 years behind what the current state of social media is so if you were to have a conversation a five minute meet meet with them and say what how could how can can i present to you some ideas from a marketing perspective that would empower me as a sales representative to push my numbers so you can go in and say i'm doing x do you think i can experiment with y to see if i can change the result to z i think oftentimes when people go in and they say okay i'm building my personal brand i'm going to become this what a marketing department rightly so with the oh you want to be the captain of your own ship you want to go do your own thing you're not going to do that on our dime but if you went in from a place of humility and said i think or or always ask a question do you think that this could help me push my sales do you have any insight into this because i've noticed that other sales people like jay barrows and all these other people i follow are understanding that when i can put a personality to the business and they build trust they're more likely to buy do you think that this could work for me how could you help me get to where i want to go when you make it a collaborative effort to show that you have the business in mind far before yourself it becomes a very different conversation love it so now say that doesn't work and outside of probably gary's answer to say uh go find another job um what would you suggest a kid do knowing the long tail of the career knowing that brand is just becoming more and more important as we grow what would you do right now would you go to different platforms and kind of do certain things on different platforms uh how would you address it if they said i'm still not comfortable with you being a jay barrows you being a jasmine type of thing even though ultimately we all know that's going to help the business the selfish part of the business is going to say yeah but we want it to be for us absolutely so number one i would never diss on gary's answer because that's my answer like for people who don't know who we're talking about we're making reference to gary vaynerchuk which is where john and i met at a vayner media event if you feel like you are so called to build a personal brand and you know you're going to be an asset to a company as a result of that if you believe that with all of your heart and it makes you want to peel your skin off your face because they're not letting you do that move on you are wasting your time in a company who is so far behind that won't even empower you to get to where you want to go now if however you're like i i i am i'm not sure i really love this company i think i can help them move to get to where i want to go then then we can talk about what is permitted and what's not permitted because a company can't say you can't be on facebook on instagram on linkedin on twitter so first you gotta prove to them on terms that they are okay with or you just find out what are you okay with and once i know what i'm okay with then i can play with that and then you just got to prove it to them it should be your sole mission that you say i can get one linkedin post a week right and i can get two instagram stories watch me make miracles with the nothing you gave me if you're that good you will make it happen hands down i love it now say this is a big challenge for reps that i talk to a lot um i'm in one industry so say i'm selling two pharmaceuticals okay so i go all in i want to be the thought leader in pharmaceutical sales i share pharmaceutical stuff i now get so i built a big brand i got a big following on all these different platforms who know me as the thought leader in that space all of a sudden a huge job comes up in the tech space and an opportunity that is like whoa now i gotta go sell b2b tech sales to enterprise how do i make that shift how do i change my brand from being this industry expert in this field because in context a lot of things a lot of reps i talk to are a little afraid to because they know they're not going to be in that industry for a long time they know they're not going to be selling whatever that is for a long time so they're kind of like why should i build my brand on that thing when i know maybe in two years i'm going to go be selling something else how do you make that shift at this point in time to be fully cognizant that you are becoming a thought leader in something but your brand is still you and if you are a thought leader in pharmaceutical sales you're not a thought leader just in pharmaceutical sales you're a thought leader in sales and at that point it's relation to pharmaceutical but if they're going to bring you in and sell it to a different way if you know how to sell you know how to sell anything now the the mechanisms the verbiage the dialogue is different but if this is it if i was you know top top dog pharmaceutical sales and then i'm going to go and sell something in the tech space i would be very open with my audience and i have made pivots very similar i went from being a photographer to doing a branding and social media marketing consulting to actually empowering entrepreneurs i had to make three big pivots in my life and i'm thankful that i brought a lot of the audience with me why because people weren't following me just for photography people were following me just for consulting people were not following me just for social media they're following me because they think that i have an insight into industries that's slightly different now i went in and said my brand was a jasmine star a four thinker a thought leader a tastemaker in regards to whatever the current issues are i went in and started my brand that way and guess what i think god willing if i live a long life i'm gonna pivot another five six times as my business diversifies as my teams gets big and i don't think i'm gonna lose people because i'm betting on me as my brand not a small little technicality in sales it's gonna be who you are as a personal brand that extends across disciplines people will go with you because of that love it uh two more questions um risk and opportunity how do you assess risk versus opportunity in the sense that i have a new opportunity for a job grass is always greener uh what's that risk versus whoa that's an opportunity how do you look at that and what are some tactical things you could give to people out there to to assess that to so that it can help them make a decision um i'm a big fan of working backwards from your dream life now part of the problem is so many of us i i felt i succumbed to the same pressure early in my career i never took the time to identify what my dream life was because it's so easy on social to say my dream life is the jets and it's the ferrari and it's the 12 watches on my right arm and 13 watches on my left arm and i'm in a visa every weekend we could think that that's the dream life we could be told that but if that's not anything you want then that's just trash so in my mind because i've clearly identified my version of success my dream life my satisfaction that when i look at an opportunity or a risk all i have to answer is does it get me closer to my dream life i don't care that the 401k i don't care about the sales percentage i don't care about the bonuses if it takes me farther from my dream life and my dream life has to be identified so that when i look at it i say this is an opportunity because even if it goes bust i could be one baby step closer to ultimately where i want to be i'm going to meet the right people i'm going to get the connections i'm going to be in the right space for it to finally align in my life tactically how far out do you look at for your dream life because my benchmark is about five years because anything past that i'm like who knows what's going to happen so do you look five years out ten years out like what's that benchmark for you well john we know each other a little bit so you know i'm extra right so um i i always am a one three five and ten i have way less attachment to my ten-year plan right i was always raised if you don't know where you're going you're never going to know when you arrive but i am hell bent on my one-year plan i am just like i have to hit these numbers these are the projects i'm going to do you know and the longer it gets out there's more latitude but for me having these four these four different benchmarks i'm like okay then i can see where i'm trending i can totally see where i'm trending love it and then it's just backing into the goal setting to get there right absolutely absolutely absolutely so what's the next five years look like for you what's that benchmark for you right now the benchmark for me okay okay so this is crazy i just had this conversation this morning with my team like what's been happening in the business has been so cool and so radical that people are wanting to come and they want to pay top dollar to have me go in and consult with their businesses have me go in and talk about the strategies because it's a power play of mine and i told my team that we're looking at minimum a mid six figure opportunity revenue funnel within our business that i'm looking at and i'm like it doesn't get me closer to where i want to go and this year it would be great to have this revenue stream but it's going to hold me back from pursuing ultimately what i want to do in five years and in five years i want to be doing collaborative efforts by creating content for business owners that is fully funded fully free but fully funded by third party representation ideally i have a facebook watch channel where people come in and there's constant premium quality stuff that i could talk about what does it mean to have a mindset of a leader a mindset of a winner a mindset of a business owner to take control of their lives and take the scary steps to get there i don't want to sit there and try to pit my own stuff i want to speak my truth and have other people pay for that content yes now if i took the consulting john if i don't have time to create these free videos and let me just tell you for anybody who's watching this journey right now my videos be ghetto is all get out and you want to know what i'm okay with it i'm okay with it because i gotta continue showing up because by the time the opportunity comes for me to create a sizzle reel to pitch it to mark zuckerberg i'm gonna be ready it's gonna look like a hot mess but guess what i continued showing up and again this just goes back to where do i want to be in five years love it absolutely love it so jasmine uh last last question from a seven-year-old daughter what advice would you give my little seven-year-old daughter right now if you're going looking back at you as a woman at seven years old what would be one thing that you would tell a seven-year-old little girl uh keep running fast faster than you ever thought before and understand that everything will be okay that's just it that's if i can go back and tell my seven-year-old self you know what john if i had even seven years ago had the opportunity to sit down and talk about what my dream life would look like i couldn't even dream it this good i don't have a ferrari i don't have a private jet but that's not my version of success john if i can go back seven to my seven-year-old self if i can go back to myself seven years ago i'd say run everything will be okay that's what i would tell her jasmine thank you so much um it's been an absolute pleasure even better than i expected even my expectations were high um uh so by the way megan who's my coo is in love with you so if you just say a quick shout out to megan shout out boo boo good i'm glad you're up in john's ear make sure remind them make sure we go we go i went after her i was like megan you bitch because she goes she watches everything of yours and i was like all right give me the summary give me the highlights so i used her for that um and and i mean i think it's pretty obvious where to find you but what's what's the best way to find information about you and support what you're doing thank you john on my website jasminestar.com you will find all social media but you'll find me all on social media as well as at jasmine star love it so thank you so much everybody please go follow jasmine if you like you you know regardless of being in sales she speaks the truth in every way and and i love your message and i've always said you know you're like a ray of sunshine in a rather cloudy world these days so i want to thank you for that and um i wish you all the luck in the world thank you homie tell tell send megan my love send your seven-year-old my love i appreciate the honor seriously thank you john so so so so so so so so so so you you